UK currently has the strictest entry requirements of any host country; Russian president spoke as Serbia starts to produce vaccine
- Visitors to France from countries including US and UK won’t have to quarantine
- Many Britons plan to press ahead with foreign holidays despite advice
- Why a US health worker is being charged with spreading Covid
- Menstruation changes after Covid jab short-lived, say experts
- Tokyo cornered into going ahead with Games, says Olympic official
- ‘Vax-n-win’: Guam launches lottery prize for vaccine recipients
Here are some of the key developments over the past few hours:
A quarter of elderly black people in the UK have not been vaccinated, recent figures show, despite signs that hesitancy is improving generally.
Nearly six months after the government kicked off the country’s most ambitious vaccination campaign, almost one in four black people over the age of 70 were not vaccinated as of 26 May, compared with 97% of white people of the same age.
Related: One in four elderly black people in the UK still not vaccinated
Major airlines are pressing the US government on its decision not to move quickly to relax Covid-19 restrictions that block travellers who have been in much of Europe and elsewhere even as other countries began to ease prohibitions.
Reuters have the story,
On Monday, the heads of several major airlines, as well as the chief executives of Heathrow Airport and industry group the US Travel Association will hold a virtual news conference to push for the removal of travel restrictions between the United States and the United Kingdom.
On hand will be the CEOs of American Airlines, IAG unit British Airways, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and JetBlue Airways Corp.
The US has administered 299,120,522 Covid-19 doses and distributed 369,159,075 doses as of Friday morning, the CDC said.
The figures are up from the 297,720,928 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by June 3 out of 368,375,195 doses delivered.
Brazil registered 1,454 new coronavirus related deaths and 37,936 new cases, according to data released by the nation’s Health Ministry on Friday.
The country has now registered 470,842 total deaths, and 16.84m confirmed cases. Daily deaths have decreased considerably from the country’s second wave peak in April but remain high by historical standards.
Prosecutors in Camden, New Jersey, charged a home health aide accused of inadvertently exposing an elderly patient to Covid-19 early in the pandemic in what appears to be the only case of its kind. The patient, an 80-year-old woman, died of the illness in May last year.
The attempt to hold an essential worker criminally liable for the spread of Covid-19 resulted in the worker, 51-year-old Josefina Brito-Fernandez, permanently losing her license to work and entering a probation program for fear she would be deported.
Related: ‘Outrageous’: why was a US health worker charged with spreading Covid?
Mexican officials have said that they will use 1m doses of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine to inoculate people along the border.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, “There is going to be a special vaccination plan in the border communities of our country on the northern border, with the aim of getting border transportation back to normal.”
Mexican officials said they will have to obtain another 2 million doses of the one-shot vaccine, which they might purchase from Johnson & Johnson to vaccinate the 3 million border residents between 18 and 40.
Presumably, those over 40 will be covered by Mexico’s regular nationwide campaign, which does not use Johnson & Johnson, although the shot has been approved for use in Mexico.
United Airlines has announced it will be adding more flights to Paris this summer after France announced that they would be reopening the country to vaccinated travellers from the US from 9 June.
Guam has joined other US states dangling lottery money and other cash prizes in a bid to achieve herd immunity by 21 July, marking the 77th anniversary of the island’s liberation from Japanese forces.
The island’s governor, Lourdes Leon Guerrero, said the “vax n’ win” incentive program is intended to accelerate the government’s “Operation Liberate Guam” – a campaign to fully inoculate 80% of the island’s 160,000 people by liberation day.
“As of today, we have vaccinated 82,778 people. To achieve herd immunity, we are targeting to vaccinate as many as 96,000 people,” Leon Guerrero told a press conference Friday. “We need over 13,000 more shots in arms to achieve Operation Liberate Guam.”
The government is using a portion of its coronavirus-relief aid from the US government to fund the online lottery, which offers $10,000 in cash, a brand-new car and other small prizes each week starting 16 June leading up to liberation day.
Related: ‘Vax-n-win’: Guam launches lottery prize for vaccine recipients
A Belgian judge has announced that she will give her ruling over a legal dispute between the EU and AstraZeneca over a shortfall of Covid-19 vaccine doses to Europe, within a month.
AFP reports,
The European Commission, acting on behalf of the EU’s 27 member states, is suing the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant for failing to deliver millions of vaccine doses it had promised this year in a contract with Brussels.
But AstraZeneca has argued it is only compelled to make “best reasonable efforts” to meet deliveries. The firm’s CEO Pascal Soriot has said production was prioritised for Britain, as the vaccine was developed at Oxford University.
Argentina and Serbia have officially started the production of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, the Russian state TV channel Rossiya 24 reported on Friday.
The vaccine produced in Argentina and Serbia will meet their needs first and is expected to be exported at a later stage, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) which is marketing the vaccine said in a statement.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director has urged teenagers to get vaccinated, as new data has shown that one in three teenagers hospitalised due to the virus needed ICU admission earlier this year.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement on Friday, “I am deeply concerned by the numbers of hospitalised adolescents and saddened to see the number of adolescents who required treatment in intensive care units or mechanical ventilation.”
The rate of hospitalisation due to Covid-19 increased among adolescents aged 12 to 17 in April to 1.3 per 100,000 people from a lower rate in mid-March, the CDC said in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
Among 204 adolescents, who were hospitalised mainly for Covid-19 between 1 January and 31 March, 31.4 per cent were admitted to an intensive care unit and about 5 per cent required mechanical ventilation, the agency said.
Technical staff at Brazil’s health regulator, Anvisa, recommended on Friday that conditions be attached to any approval of the Russian Covid-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, and only be used on healthy adults.
Reuters reports that Anvisa’s board is expected to announce whether it will uphold, overturn, or modify its decision in April to reject the importing of the Sputnik V doses due to a lack of information guaranteeing its safety, quality, and effectiveness, later today.
Hi, I’m Edna Mohamed, I’ll be taking you through the latest coronavirus news for the next few hours. If I miss anything you can drop me a message on Twitter or email me at edna.mohamed.casual@theguardian.com
Uefa is currently in conversation with the UK government to ease coronavirus quarantine restrictions on overseas supporters for the knockout stages of Euro 2020 championships.
The UK currently has the strictest entry requirements of any host country, requiring visitors from amber list countries to quarantine for ten days on arrival and needing negative PCR.
We are in a dialogue with the Government; we are looking at what’s possible. The prime minister and the British government said the 21st of June would be the date when in principle, everything should go back to normal. And if it goes back to normal, what will the rules say for foreigners to come to the UK who are not on a business trip?
We are in a dialogue, and we hope that we can achieve something if the situation allows it, that something could happen on that side.
Portugal has demanded an explanation for the UK’s decision to remove it from the “green list” from Tuesday, as frustration among people in Britain who had made plans to travel to the country mount.
Related: ‘Unfair and illogical’: Britons react angrily to Portugal’s downgrade
Canada has negotiated an option with Pfizer for an extra 3 million doses of its Covid vaccine for delivery in September, prime minister Justin Trudeau has said.
He said the government was on track to meet its target of inoculating everyone who wanted to be protected against the coronavirus by the end of September.
Some researchers believe Covid-19 has derailed the fight against HIV, siphoning away health workers and other resources and setting back a US campaign to decimate the AIDS epidemic by 2030.
AP has the full story:
Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of the first report that brought AIDS to the attention of the public. For a time, the battle against HIV — the virus that causes AIDS — was going well. But experts believe the US could soon see its first increase in infections in years. Internationally, recent strides could also be undone because of Covid-19’s interruption of HIV testing and care.
“Covid was a huge setback,” said Jeffrey Crowley, a former director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy who is now at Georgetown University.
Health authorities in the US are still trying to determine whether heart inflammation that can occur along with many types of infections could also be a rare side effect in teens and young adults after the second dose of Covid-19 vaccine.
AP has the story:
An article on seven US teen boys in several states, published online today in Pediatrics, is among the latest reports of heart inflammation discovered after Covid-19 vaccination, though a link to the vaccine has not been proven.
The boys, aged 14 to 19, received Pfizer shots in April or May and developed chest pain within a few days. Heart imaging tests showed a type of heart muscle inflammation called myocarditis.
Related: CDC studying reports of heart inflammation in young Covid vaccine recipients
Russia has recorded nearly 425,000 excess deaths from April 2020 to April 2021, Reuters calculations based on data released by Russia’s state statistics service shows.
The number of excess deaths, which many epidemiologists say is the best way to measure the real death toll from Covid-19, exceeds the official Covid-19 death toll of 123,037 which is calculated by Russia’s coronavirus task force. However, there will have been many deaths from other causes.
The number of people in intensive care with Covid-19 in France set a 2021 low today, falling below the level reached following the end of the country’s second lockdown in November.
The health ministry reported that the number of Covid-19 patients in ICU fell by 106 to 2,571 as France unwinds its third nationwide lockdown. The number of people in ICU reached a high of 6,001 on 26 April, Reuters reports.
A Belgian judge presiding over a legal dispute between the EU and AstraZeneca over a shortfall of Covid-19 vaccine doses for Europe said she would give her ruling within a month.
The European Commission, acting on behalf of EU member states, is suing the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant for failing to deliver millions of vaccine doses it had promised this year in a contract with Brussels.
A nine-year old Asiatic lion has died from coronavirus in a state-run zoo on the outskirts of the south Indian city of Chennai, the zoo has said.
There have been various Covid cases in animals, including two white white tiger cubs thought to have died of Covid-19 in neighbouring Pakistan and lions have also tested positive in Spain and two other cities of India.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has claimed that Europe was slow to approve Russia’s Covid vaccine because of a “battle for money” and that commercial interests were being put ahead of the welfare of European citizens.
His allegations come as Serbia announced today it is starting to produce Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, making the Balkan country the first European nation outside Russia and Belarus to take the step.
UK health secretary Matt Hancock has said vaccinating children in Britain would take priority over donating vaccine doses to other countries around the world.
He said after a meeting of G7 healthcare ministers in Oxford, central England:
My first duty as health secretary for the UK is to make sure that the UK is protected and safe, and whilst thankfully children are very rarely badly affected by Covid themselves, they can still pass on the disease.
Alongside that I’m working with my international colleagues to make sure that people can get access to the vaccine around the world, and in particular of course the Oxford vaccine.
Almost 2,800 years later, the world has been just as disunited I’m afraid as Achilles and Agamemnon. And I think now is the time to come together and to defeat the pandemic and to prevent another.
Now is the time to move away from the temptations of competing nationalism ... And instead reassert the power, the duty, the necessity for nations to act together, building collective defence against the common enemy of disease.
Related: The pros and cons of giving Covid vaccines to UK children
Italy has reported 73 deaths, against 59 on Thursday, while the daily tally of new infections rose to 2,557 from 1,968. Citing the health ministry, Reuters reports:
Italy has registered 126,415 deaths since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eight-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.2m cases to date.
Patients in hospital – not including those in intensive care – stood at 5,488 on Friday, down from 5,717 a day earlier.
Taiwan’s economy minister, Wang Mei-hua, is in isolation at home after a colleague tested positive, though she has tested negative for the virus, Reuters quotes her ministry as saying.
Taiwan is grappling with a spike in domestic infections after months of keeping the pandemic well under control, and the government has tightened curbs including limiting gatherings and closing entertainment venues.
The economy ministry said Wang has been in home quarantine since Wednesday and would be conducting meetings virtually.
Nepal has reported its first death from mucormycosis, or “black fungus”, the highly deadly infection affecting thousands of coronavirus patients in neighbouring India.
Krishna Prasad Poudel, a health ministry spokesman, told AFP that there were now at least ten cases in Nepal, which like India has been hit by a huge Covid-19 surge.
Researchers exploring whether Covid vaccines may disrupt menstrual cycles have said any potential changes to periods are short-term and do not affect fertility.
Related: Any menstrual changes after Covid jab would be short-lived, experts say
Switzerland will start distributing “Covid-19 certificates” next week to people who have been vaccinated, tested negative or recovered from infection as a way to ease travel in Europe, the government has said.
Reuters reports:
It is still working out details of when a certificate - available in hard copy and electronic format – must be presented domestically and which restrictions may be lifted for bearers including those seeking to attend events.
“The goal of the certificate is clear: it should create freedom of movement by showing one has been vaccinated, recovered or tested. In particular it will make travel in the Schengen area simpler,” finance minister Ueli Maurer told a news conference in Bern, referring to the 26-member passport-free zone in Europe that includes Switzerland.
The estimated reproduction (R) number in England remains at over 1 and the epidemic could be growing by as much as 3% each day, the UK’s health ministry has said.
Reuters reports that the estimated R number is between 1.0 and 1.2, meaning that on average, every 10 people infected will infect between 10 and 12 other people. Last week, it was estimated at between 1.0 and 1.1.
US travel firm Booking Holdings has said it will repay $110 million in assistance it received from governments during the pandemic, following criticism in the Dutch parliament about the company’s 2020 executive pay.
Reuters has the story:
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it would repay some $110 million it had received from various governments, including $78 million in the Netherlands, home of its largest subsidiary.
“While the decision to accept this assistance was made during a period when the Company’s business was severely impacted and the timing and pace of the recovery of the travel industry was very uncertain, the Company is now encouraged by the improving booking trends,” it said.
The Russian president Vladimir Putin has – perhaps unsurprisingly – praised his country’s response to the pandemic.
Addressing an economic forum in St Petersburg today, Putin lauded the efficiency of Russian-designed vaccines and bemoaned what he described as “politically motivated bans” in some countries on their purchase.
Spain has said it wants to offer Covid-19 vaccines to everyone aged between 12 and 17 before the start of the new school year in September.
The health minister, Carolina Darias, told public television TVE that the government would propose the measure to the public health commission which then must approve the move, AFP reports.
Hundreds gathered today for the first concert in the Saudi capital since the start of the pandemic to watch performances by the Syrian artist Assala Nasri and the Kuwaiti singer Nabeel Shuail.
AFP has the story:
“This is the first concert to take place in Saudi for a very long time,” said one spectator at the concert, held in a restaurant of a large Riyadh hotel. “We are delighted to come from Kuwait to attend the concert,” said a Kuwaiti tourist.
Saudi Arabia has officially recorded more than 454,000 coronavirus infections, including 7,408 deaths.
The root cause of pandemics – the destruction of nature – is being ignored, scientists have warned. The focus of world leaders on responding to future outbreaks overlooks the far cheaper and more effective strategy of stopping the spillover of disease from animals to humans in the first place, they have said.
Related: World leaders ‘ignoring’ role of destruction of nature in causing pandemics
Resisting calls for a patent waiver, the EU has submitted to the World Trade Organization a plan it claims would more effectively broaden supply of Covid-19 vaccines than the intellectual property (IP) rights waiver backed by the US.
Reuters reports that India, South Africa and dozens of developing countries are demanding an IP rights waiver for Covid-19 vaccines and other treatments to address what they say is a “staggering inequity” in access to global public goods.
The Indian government is yet to decide on whether to offer legal protection to local manufacturers of Covid-19 vaccines, Vinod Kumar Paul, a top adviser to the government, has said.
India has been inoculating people with the AstraZeneca vaccine produced locally by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and Covaxin made by the local firm Bharat Biotech, and it will commercially launch Russia’s Sputnik V shots by mid-June.
The top US health official Dr Anthony Fauci has called on China to release the medical records of Wuhan virology lab workers whose ailments might provide vital clues into whether Covid-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak, the Financial Times reports.
“I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019. Did they really get sick, and if so, what did they get sick with?” Fauci told the FT.
Japan has now delivered to Taiwan 1.24m unwanted doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine for free, more than doubling the amount of shots the island has received to date.
“At the time of the great east Japan earthquake 10 years ago, people in Taiwan sent us a lot of donations quickly. I believe that is etched vividly in the minds of Japanese people,” said the Japanese foreign minister, Toshimitsu Motegi. “Such an important partnership and friendship with Taiwan is reflected in this offer.”
Wealthy countries need to give more Covid-19 vaccines and follow the US in making doses available immediately to cover a 200m dose gap caused by Indian supply disruptions and manufacturing delays, a World Health Organization adviser has said.
Bruce Aylward said that only a small portion of the 150m doses donated via the Covax sharing scheme would be available in the short-term in June, July and August, and the WHO is urging wealthy countries to donate their surplus doses to poorer countries instead of giving them to less vulnerable groups.
Here’s the full story on a senior Japanese Olympic official criticising the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and claiming Tokyo has been “cornered” into going ahead with the Games despite widespread public opposition, courtesy of our Tokyo correspondent Justin McCurry.
In the strongest objections from inside the Olympic movement so far, Kaori Yamaguchi, an executive member of the Japanese Olympic Committee, warned the Games would leave a “bitter taste”.
Related: Tokyo cornered into going ahead with Games, says Olympic official
My colleagues on the community team are looking for people to share their experiences from the last year and more.
Related: Tell us about your experiences during the Covid pandemic
Médecins Sans Frontières has warned that Peru, which has the highest Covid-19 mortality rate worldwide, is struggling with overwhelmed intensive care units.
The NGO said it had expanded its role in the country with the establishment of a new facility in Cusco to help relieve the pressure on treatment of the more critical cases.
The main challenge today is to help patients in severe and critical conditions. There are almost no beds available in intensive care units, and they are often occupied for long periods by severe Covid-19 patients. These two elements combine to create a bottleneck.
Oxygen supplies are insufficient, and a major concern is that the vaccination rate is still very low, leaving the population exposed and the healthcare system under pressure.
There were scenes of joy this morning in Europe’s only war-partitioned capital as Greek and Turkish Cypriots took advantage of the opening of checkpoints closed on account of the pandemic 463 days ago.
Members of both communities – many older people with memories of coexistence – passed through the crossings that have kept the Mediterranean island’s two sides hermetically sealed from one another for more than 15 months.
By the way, if you missed it yesterday, I really would recommend our Today in Focus podcast in which my colleague Peter Beaumont talks us through why the Wuhan lab leak theory has gained traction again…
Related: The Wuhan lab leak theory
France is making itself available as a destination for international tourists who have had coronavirus jabs.
The government has announced that it is removing the need for coronavirus tests for vaccinated Europeans and also allowing vaccinated tourists from most of the rest of the world, including the US, to visit, provided they have a negative test.
Prosecutors in Camden, New Jersey, sought criminal charges against a home health aide accused of inadvertently exposing an elderly patient to Covid-19 early in the pandemic in what appears to be the only case of its kind. The patient, an 80-year-old woman, died of the illness in May last year.
The attempt to hold an essential worker criminally liable for the spread of Covid-19 resulted in the worker, 51-year-old Josefina Brito-Fernandez, permanently losing her license to work and entering a probation program for fear she would be deported.
Related: The criminalization of Covid exposure: how US prosecutors went after a home health aide
South Korea has said it expects to meet its vaccination target for the first half of the year ahead of schedule as 81% of people aged between 60 and 74 have signed up for inoculations.
The government will begin offering jabs for this age group in June, as it widens its vaccination programme after it first prioritised frontline workers, medical staff and nursing home patients.
Nicola Slawson has fired up the UK Covid live blog for the day – she’s leading with those pretty negative words from professor Neil Ferguson this morning about the spread of the Delta variant. You can follow that over here…
Related: UK Covid live news: data ‘pointing in more negative direction’, says professor Neil Ferguson
Dr Mike Tildesley, a member of the scientific pandemic influenza modelling group government advisory panel, said the 21 June proposed reopening in England will be a “really difficult decision”.
He told BBC Breakfast: “I think the question the government needs to answer, and I can’t answer this, is: if we show that cases may rise, and of course, hospital admissions and deaths may rise over the coming months, what kind of rise in those the government can cope with to allow society to reopen?
Related: Delta variant 30-100% more transmissible, says UK Covid expert
Mar-Vic Cagurangan reports for us:
The US territory of Guam has followed the US states dangling lottery money and other cash prizes in a bid to achieve herd immunity by 21 July, marking the 77th anniversary of the island’s liberation from Japanese forces.
The island’s governor, Lourdes Leon Guerrero, said the “vax n’ win” incentive programme was intended to accelerate the government’s “Operation Liberate Guam” – a campaign to fully inoculate 80% of the island’s 160,000 people by liberation day.
“As of today, we have vaccinated 82,778 people. To achieve herd immunity, we are targeting to vaccinate as many as 96,000 people,” Leon Guerrero told a press conference on Friday. “We need over 13,000 more shots in arms to achieve Operation Liberate Guam.”
Related: ‘Vax-n-win’: Guam launches lottery prize for vaccine recipients
Russia expects the World Health Organization to approve the Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus within two months, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund which markets the vaccine, has told Reuters.
He said the European Medicines Agency, which is also reviewing Sputnik V, “was provided with all basic existing information, there is no critical remarks for now at all”.
First minister Mark Drakeford has said he believes Wales is “right to be concerned” about the Delta variant of Covid-19.
“It is spreading very quickly in the north-west of England, right on our border,” Drakeford told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning. “We know it’s more transmissible. There is some evidence that it is driving more people into hospitals.”
Communities minister Robert Jenrick is being quizzed repeatedly about the so-called “Nepal variant” in the UK media round this morning, and has not always had the facts at his fingertips.
Jenrick said he did not know how many cases there were of the new variant of the coronavirus.
If you are in the UK you may have been hearing a lot of references to the “Nepal variant” – one of the reasons that the UK government has given for moving Portugal off the green list of countries that you can travel to freely internationally. Our science editor Ian Sample put together a guide yesterday to what it is. He writes:
Nepal does not do much genomic sequencing, but among the variants identified, there is at least one case of Delta variant, first found in India, that carries a mutation called K417N. The same variant has been found in numerous countries including the UK, Portugal, the US and India. It has cropped up 14 times in Japan, and 13 of those samples were in travellers from Nepal. It is not clear, however, where the variant originated. In all, 91 cases have been logged in the Gisaid coronavirus database.
The K417N mutation is found in the Beta variant first detected in South Africa. The Beta variant is a concern because evidence suggests it is partially resistant to vaccines based on the original pandemic virus, and to immunity gained from previous Covid infection. The K417N mutation is believed to be part of the reason the Beta variant can evade vaccines to some degree, so when the highly transmissible Delta variant acquires the mutation, scientists are bound to pay attention.
Related: Nepal Covid variant: does it exist and should we be concerned?
Professor Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London, whose modelling was instrumental to the UK locking down in March 2020, has also been on the airwaves in the UK this morning.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “We’re certainly getting more data. Unfortunately, I mean, the news is not as positive as I would like on any respect about the Delta variant. The best estimate at the moment is this variant may be 60% more transmissible than the Alpha variant.”
The NHS cannot provide thousands of extra doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Blackburn with Darwen borough, despite it having the highest infection rate in the UK and a death rate almost a third higher than the national average.
The local MP said it “beggared belief” that Blackburn’s repeated pleas to continue surge vaccinations had been knocked back, arguing the move will place the NHS under “overwhelming and unnecessary pressure”.
Related: No more vaccine surge in Blackburn, says NHS as infection rate grows
In Russia they’ve been carrying out a trial with mixing doses of the Sputnik V vaccine and the AstraZeneca shot, and this morning Reuters are reporting that no negative side-effects were detected in the study.
While on the media round in the UK this morning, communities secretary Robert Jenrick has been asked about the suggestion that the UK government should simplify the red, amber and green list system. He emphasised again that people should be avoiding travel to countries on the amber list.
In a quote which suggests he’s maybe never tried to cross the road in London at a set of traffic lights as a pedestrian, Jenrick said: “I hope people will appreciate that you shouldn’t be visiting those countries on the amber list for holidays. You wouldn’t drive through an amber light at the traffic lights, you shouldn’t be going on holiday to those countries either.”
A lot of media coverage of international restrictions on travel out of the UK has had its focus on pent-up demand for holidays in the sun, often leaving aside the people who wish to travel because they haven’t seen loved ones for months. This morning’s media round in the UK has seen communities minister Robert Jenrick wheeled out to defend changes to the green, amber and red list of countries.
On Sky News he was pressed why Portugal had been moved of the green list just days after thousands of football fans headed there from the UK for the Champions League Final.
WHO is not aware of any new variant of SARS-CoV-2 being detected in Nepal. The 3⃣confirmed variants in circulation are: Alpha (B.1.1.7), Delta (B.1.617.2) and Kappa (B.1.617.1). The predominant variant currently in circulation in Nepal is Delta (B.1.617.2).@mohpnep @PandavRajesh
The US trade office in Taipei has issued a statement about the US inclusion of Taiwan as a priority recipient for vaccine donations. You can imagine there is going to be a lot of diplomatic noise about this from China. The statement says:
We warmly welcome the White House announcement that Taiwan will be included in the first tranche of the more than 80 million Covid-19 vaccines the United States is planning to share with those in need. Further details on the deliveries of these vaccines to Taiwan will be forthcoming. The American people will never forget Taiwan’s generosity in providing face masks and other emergency supplies during the early stages of the Covid-19 crisis in the United States. As the pandemic surges in many locations in the Indo-Pacific, and amidst the severe global shortage of vaccines, the donations announced today will help Taiwan protect its most vulnerable populations.
Cyprus reopened checkpoints closed by the Covid-19 pandemic this morning easing movement between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations, months after they were sealed shut.
Nine checkpoints along a 180 km (116 mile) ceasefire line splitting the east Mediterranean island reopened to civilians. Pre-pandemic, the checkpoints were used by thousands every day.
Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison has announced a major revamp of the country’s Covid-19 vaccination programme, opening access for those aged 40 to 49 and calling in the army to oversee the rollout.
After national cabinet on Friday, Morrison announced the appointment of Lieutenant General John Frewen to oversee a rollout beset by missed targets and delays, in an effort the prime minister likened to turning back asylum seeker boats during Operation Sovereign Borders.
Related: Scott Morrison moves to ramp up Covid vaccine rollout and opens access to 40-year-olds
Good morning from London, it is Martin Belam here. One of the big questions since the pandemic first started is whether you can catch Covid again after having been infected. A study in Denmark a couple of months ago suggested that under-65s had about 80% protection for at least six months from catching Covid a second time, but the over-65s had only 47% protection.
Nina Massey, who is a science correspondent at PA media, writes this morning about a new study out of the UK, which suggests that the risk of being infected with coronavirus is substantially reduced for up to 10 months after a first infection.
That’s it from me, Helen Livingstone, today, I’m handing over to my colleague in London, Martin Belam.
Here’s a quick summary of what’s been happening over the past hours:
A Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) board member has blasted organisers of the Tokyo Games for ignoring public concerns about holding the global sporting showpiece amid a pandemic, as Japan’s top medical adviser urged new steps to reduce the risk, Reuters reports.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) appeared to think it could steamroll over the wishes of the Japanese public, who, surveys show, overwhelmingly want the games cancelled or postponed, the JOC’s Kaori Yamaguchi said in an opinion piece carried by Japan’s Kyodo news agency.
A Melbourne family who visited the neighbouring state of New South Wales while likely infectious have been confirmed to have Delta variant, the predominant coronavirus variant in India, Australian officials say.
The news came as health officials said they had no plans to end Melbourne’s 14-day lockdown earlier than planned, despite two cases of “fleeting transmission” in the state being reclassified on Thursday as false positives.
Related: Delta variant of Covid found in West Melbourne family who travelled to NSW
Malaysian health authorities have raised concerns about a growing number of coronavirus deaths and serious cases involving children, after a surge in overall infections forced the Southeast Asian nation into a strict lockdown, Reuters reports.
Malaysia recorded the deaths of three children aged below five due to the coronavirus in the first five months of this year, the same number recorded over the whole of 2020, according to Health Ministry director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah.
Japan is to deliver to Taiwan 1.24 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for free, the foreign minister, Toshimitsu Motegi, has said, in a gesture that will more that double the amount of shots the island has received to date.
Taiwan is battling a spike in domestic infections and has vaccinated only around 3% of its population. Japan has contracted to procure more than 300 million doses of coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer Inc, Moderna Inc and AstraZeneca, more than enough to cover its entire population.
Top US infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci has called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose ailments might provide vital clues into whether Covid-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak, the Financial Times has reported (paywalled).
“I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019. Did they really get sick, and if so, what did they get sick with?” the report quoted Fauci as saying, according to Reuters.
Hello and welcome to today’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Livingstone.
Top US infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci has called on China to release the medical records of workers at a virology lab in Wuhan, as US intelligence agencies examine reports that researchers there were seriously ill in 2019, a month before the first Covid-19 cases were reported.
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